New Application for Nintendo DS allows for "DJ Style scratching"

I stumbled upon this story today and immediately thought of Ty's presentation on developing new media technologies in the music/entertainment space. Who knew? A Nintendo Ds can sub for a dj-turntable. And apparently it was developed by a prosumer (a person who is both a producer/consumer via Anthony's presentation)
More info plus video here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/23/proteinds-app-enables-dj-style-scratching-on-nintendos-ds/

Final Presentation: New Media & Crisis Management

On Tuesday -- May 6, 2008 -- I presented my research on the opportunities of using new media technology during/after a crisis. I hope the class enjoyed the presentation and I look forward to your comments. The slides are going to be up shortly.

Assignment: Paper Review

As per our assignment, here is a critique of Professor’s article entitled: " The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework".

The article does a good job in presenting New Media from different perspective, i.e. technology, content, social effect, and business and industry applications. It is approachable and could be understood by both a novice and an "expert"/user. Here are some specific comments that came to mind that may be useful:

• pg 6: "The Old vs. The New" table, specifically "Film-> Amateur videos on the web": true there are amateur videos on the web but there are also professional videos on the web, for example KPMG published its recruiting videos on their site as well as Youtube.
• Would it be helpful to define modding and mashup? (depends on the target audience of the paper I guess)
• Table III pg8-9, Timeline of New Media- Related Technologies, it may be good to include mobile technologies as well
• pg 12"Technology has become the great equalizer" .. True but only if you have access to it.
• Also on pg 12, the notion of creativity and user generated content, though this is not explicitly mentioned in the paper we discussed in class about the "80/20" rule where only a small percentage of the population actually produces the content and the rest consume it... one could counter-argue the "80/20" rule by pointing to platforms like Facebook and Myspace where an overwhelming amount of users are generating content every day.
• pg 16 NASA is not only using SecondLife to collaborate with their employees but also with their project partners.
• Questions (things I didn't understand):
  pg 14 "divergence of technology" - does this mean accessing Facebook, etc in different locations i.e home, work, train, etc ?

Overall, I thought this was a great paper that really conveyed the essence of New Media and accomplished its purpose of establishing a "framework for scholars and educators who wish to learn from and contribute to this field of study."

Thank you for sharing the paper with us Professor.

"The Age of Google" Seminar

I just learned about this and thought others in the class may be interested:

Center for Communication presents:

The Age of Google
Thursday, April 17, 2008
6:30 to 8:00 pm
Baruch College -Newman Conference Center


Michael Steib, the executive who will speak, is the Director of TV Ads for Google. According to Steib's bio, the TV Ads platform is similar to Google's auction based Internet advertising platform where advertisers bid on the price to advertise. TV Ads is supposed to make the TV process more efficient and incorporate feedback from viewers. Steib is quoted as saying, “There has been this trend to more online spending, and what we are doing is taking the things that make online spending great, like granular data, and bringing them back to TV. The pendulum is swinging back in a positive direction for TV.” Looks like a great event. For more info, check out : http://www.cencom.org/programDetail.aspx?id=2484

Class Prep: Creative Commons

We're going to discuss Creative Commons and the work of Lawrence Lessig in class today. The article I'm discussing is: "Cyberlawyer 2.0" The Economist. London: Dec 8, 2007. Vol. 385, Iss. 8558; pg. 27

The article covers Creative Commons, a non-for-profit organization founded by Lessig as an alternative to traditional copy right standards. Artists/Creators can choose the degree to which they want to copyright/protect their work, the idea being that many artist actually want to share their work for free but at the same time have some sort of acknowledgment, not necessarily in the form of royalties.

According to the author, some were surprised when Lessig announced he's "switching" his focus from copyright issues and CC to fighting corruption. I guess on the surface this may appear to be a complete turnaround but really it's essentially a shift in strategy.

On Thursday, March 20, at 1:30 pm EST Lessig will present his "Change Congress [beta]" campaign at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Since most of us will be in class and unable to attend, here's a link to the webcast : http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=46510

I'm guessing it's going to run simultaneously.


I'll be putting up more info regarding our discussion after class.

Cool Links:YouTube Scholarship & Awards plus iCommons Summit

Found these cool links while doing research for class.. check it out:

YouTube offers Vacoover Film School Scholarships: YouTube has teamed up with The Vancoover Film School to offer some scholarships.. this totally makes sense especially if your into film/video/multimedia etc. More info: http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=geZRtusAPuA


Youtube Awards: http://www.youtube.com/ytawards07


Call for Submission for the 2008 iCommons summit of Creative Commons (we're going to discuss CC in class today). Deadline March 31. Check it out!!!http://www.icommons.org/isummit08/call-for-submissions/

Tech Talk Presentations

Earlier this month, we had our Tech Talk Presentations - brief 5 minute overviews of new media applications. They were all really great, here are a few highlights:

Tiesha: "Music Media": I enjoyed the presentation and learned about the flash drive phenomena. I didn't know that artists were handing out/selling their songs via this medium.

Sergey: "Mapquest": I've used mapquest and googlemaps before but I wasn't aware of the Mapquest's beta site or the new features it offers. I really liked the real time gas pricing and mapping information and the ability to transfer the directions to your phone in a simulated GPS style.

Sarah: "TV on the Internet": Great historical overview. Watching TV online is great- you can pause at your leisure, miss a few episodes and catch up later, or if your really into the show watch it as many times as you want without having to be confined by the schedule established by the TV Networks schedule. Though one thing that bothers me about watching shows online is some sites like CW wait a few days, sometimes as long as one week before posting current shows and then take them down some time later.

More comments on the way :)

Review : "How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free "

As reported in the New York Times article "How Sticky is Membership on Facebook?", it appears that Facebook, the popular social networking behemoth, does not delete user information even after the user has "deactivated" his account. By deactivating the account, the user essentially puts the profile into hibernate mode rather than completely deleting its existence. Certain aspects of the profile can also be traced back to the user via Google search. Facebook representatives explain that this behavior ultimately provides a service to the user as whenever the user wishes to comeback, his information and profile will be available as if untouched. Others speculate that user information is stored for advertising and demographics purposes. One former user has threatened to sue Facebook for it's account management practices and another created a Facebook group instructing others how to delete their account.




My perspective? In traditional media, if you create something, whether it be writing, art, poetry, an article, whatever, as the creator you are the owner of that work. You can transfer your ownership by selling your rights or otherwise "giving" your rights away. But giving away one's rights doesn't make any sense unless there is some benefit to be gained in the process. In this situation, one can argue that the user is giving up his right to his own user developed content in exchange for the privilege of using Facebook's software and other proprietary features. On the other hand however, one can argue that regardless of the benefit gained in the process, most of the information that is in question is private information, for example contact information including telephone number(s), emails, location, personal photographs, etc. and as such it should remain at the discretion of the user if the information may be archived or permanently deleted since the Constitution guarantees the Right to Privacy.



Story update: In a follow up article published by the New York Times, "After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser", Maria Aspen reports that Facebook has created an online form to facilitate the process of deleting user accounts. Initially, the form experienced some sort of technical difficulties as user accounts were still popping up via Google search after Facebook confirmed the account was deleted.


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Hi & Welcome!

Hi everyone,
This blog is about New Media ( as the title suggests) and is connected to a class I'm taking about... New Media : )

First thing first.. what is new media you say? and what is this evolution I speak of?

New Media is a lot of things. The transmission of information through